There is something about standing stones that is strangely captivating. Their peculiar, ambiguous form draws your attention first.
Many menhirs (an alternative name that translates as ‘long stone’ in Cornish or Breton) appear as isolated, accusing fingers that do little but point at the sky, lending them an air of mystery. Then there is the extravagant effort required to quarry, transport and erect them, when our ancestors must have had other calls on their time.
Finally there is the question of purpose. Are they ancient memorials, avatars of ancestors still at large in the landscape or did they have a more prosaic function?
Sadly, the thinking that drove our megalithic cultures to do this is lost to us now and we may have to make do with the mystique that remains, along with the consolation that visiting our most interesting stones leads us to corners of Britain that are fascinating in their own right.
The stones are part of a wider landscape upon which our ancestors erected stone circles, dolmen, barrows, avenues and other pieces of Neolithic or Bronze Age field furniture. In a few cases, they are found in a small group of other stones forming rows or odd arrangements and for which there is frequently a legend attached.
One of the most bizarre arrangements of stones is at the Mên-an-Tol on Penwith in Cornwall – a holed stone, about a metre high, is aligned between two short standing stones, almost certainly not in their original positions. It’s thought to be part of a former circle, with the holed stone probably part of a long-forgotten nearby tomb, but in its rearranged form it is ssociated with a treasury of miracles, from healing rickets to magical fertility rites.
At Rudston in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the Devil was supposed to have thrown a stone at the church and missed, but Rudston Monolith was here long before the church and at 7.6m high – Britain’s tallest and 40 tons in weight – it easily matches its younger cousin in gravitas.
Scotland’s tallest, Clach-an-Truiseil (the Stone of Compassion) is a stone’s throw from the northwestern coast of Lewis in the Western Isles. At 5.8m it’s the sole surviving monolith from a complete circle, of which there are no shortage on Lewis. Its original purpose was surely about making a connection – one that has endured between its builders and the landscape for 5,000 years.
